The Sixth Idea

by P. J. Tracy

  In the same cabinet there was a staggering number of prescription drug bottles and printed pharmacy drug information sheets coldly detailing how every single one of them could cause anything from dry mouth and dizziness to sudden death, and every other really shitty side effect you could imagine in between. He checked the blue pill keepers that had compartments for every day of the week. They were loaded for the next six days, and both Vivian and Alvin had taken their morning doses. Nothing out of place.

  Gino walked into the kitchen just as Magozzi found a grocery store receipt and the Campbell’s Scotch Broth withering on the stove. “What’s that smell?”

  “Soup’s on. Vivian came home from the store, put the soup on the stove, then found a dead stranger. And you’re right about the timeline being short. Time stamp on this receipt places her there less than an hour ago. Three cans of soup and a loaf of bread and the store’s four blocks away.”

  Gino peered into the pan and turned off the burner. “Campbell’s Scotch Broth. Huh. I didn’t even know they still made it. My grandpa ate that for lunch every day of his life.”

  Magozzi had almost forgotten he’d been on hold with HCMC, and when the nurse finally came back on the line, he put it on speaker for Gino to hear.

  “Detective Magozzi?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry to take so long. Vivian Keller arrested en route to us. She’s in ICU.”

  Magozzi thanked the nurse and hung up. “Poor lady.”

  “Yeah,” Gino said morosely. “Come on. Let’s go talk to Mr. Snowman next door while we wait for our relief.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Knute Viestad was indeed frail, as Brady had mentioned, and leaned heavily on one of those high-tech canes as he opened the door a crack, keeping the security chain bolted. He could have been eighty or a hundred, Magozzi couldn’t tell.

  “Are you the police?” he asked in a reedy voice.

  “Yes sir. Detective Magozzi and my partner, Detective Rolseth.”

  He closed the door, unlocked the chain, and opened the door. “Come on in.”

  “Thank you for speaking with us, Mr. Viestad.”

  He hobbled to the sofa and sank into it, gesturing to two easy chairs. “Please, have a seat. It’s Alvin, isn’t it?” He looked away as his eyes started misting with tears. “The minute I heard Vivian scream, and then heard the sirens . . . dang, I knew this day was coming.”

  Magozzi and Gino stole a quick glance at each other, and Gino took the lead. “Sir, Mr. Keller is missing. His wife came home from the store and he was gone.”

  Mr. Viestad’s hands started to quiver on the top of his cane. “I . . . I don’t understand. Alvin couldn’t have gone anywhere on his own. Where’s Vivian?”

  “She’s in the hospital, Mr. Viestad, she had quite a shock.”

  His mouth groped around a hundred questions, his eyes bobbled in confusion as he tried to follow an impossible story line, but he remained mute.

  Magozzi knew how he felt—this was an impossible story line, and Mr. Viestad didn’t know the half of it yet. “Did you know Alvin and Vivian well?” he asked, hoping to get him refocused.

  That seemed to bring him to a happy place. “We’ve been friends for nearly twenty years. They sure did look out for me when my Ruth died in oh-nine. Don’t know what I’d have done without them to help me get through.” His happy place suddenly disappeared and he bowed his head shamefully. “But I didn’t look after Vivian, did I? When I heard her screaming, I called nine-one-one, but to be honest, I was afraid to go to her.”

  “You did the right thing, Mr. Viestad. Nobody should walk into potential trouble.”

  “That’s exactly right,” Gino seconded, and Knute looked up, his lips trembling.

  “Thank you for that, Detectives. But what happened to Alvin?”

  “We’re trying to find that out, sir,” Magozzi said gently. “Did the Kellers have any children?”

  He shook his head.

  Shit, Magozzi thought, praying to God he wasn’t going to have to call a bus for another elderly person today. “Mr. Viestad, we found a woman in the Kellers’ home. Young, expensively dressed. She was murdered.”

  Poor Knute looked like somebody had just whacked him on the head with a cast-iron frying pan. “Murdered?” he finally peeped.

  “She was shot. You didn’t hear anything?”

  “I was watching TV and the only thing I heard was Vivian screaming.”

  “Could she have been an acquaintance of the Kellers?”

  The old man shook his head decisively. “Oh, no. They didn’t see anyone. All their old friends, the ones still living, anyhow, live way up north by the Canadian border. But at this age, nobody goes visiting anymore, not with that new Sipe or Skype or whatever it’s called. And with Alvin so sick and all, they pretty much stayed put and didn’t have anybody over, except me and the Meals on Wheels lady, but she’s not a young woman. Mercy me. I just don’t understand this . . .”

  “Skype?” Gino asked.

  Viestad looked up. “Sure. Alvin tried to show me how to run the dag-blamed thing, but that’s all Greek to me.”

  “So he Skyped with friends?” Magozzi asked, wondering how they could have missed a computer in their initial walk-through.

  “Oh, yes, that kept him busy and his mind off his troubles. He always said how much he missed it up there. He worked at a foundry there for years before he retired.”

  Magozzi lifted his head abruptly. “What kind of foundry?”

  “Iron foundry. They made train cars, farm implements, things like that. American Iron Foundry, I think it’s called.”

  Magozzi scrawled down Wallace Luntz—foundry? in his notebook.

  “We didn’t see a computer in the house,” Gino said.

  Viestad frowned. “Can’t miss it. It’s a big ol’ rig, one of them fancy new ones, sitting right on the table by the sofa. That’s where Alvin spent most of his time.”

  Gino let out a deep breath and pushed up out of his chair. “Mr. Viestad, thank you so much for helping us out.”

  Knute Viestad stood slowly. “I hope I have helped you out. Do you know where they took Vivian?”

  “Hennepin County Medical Center.”

  He nodded. “Thank you. And if there’s anything more I can do for you . . . you got any more questions, any way I can help with Alvin, I’m always here. I don’t go anywhere either.”

  • • •

  “This is just sad all the way around,” Gino muttered as they did another walk-through of the Kellers’ house, looking for a computer that wasn’t there. “And weird. Every new piece of information just fogs up the picture. What are we supposed to believe? That some home invader or jealous ex walked in, shot a woman, left the bling and the gun, and then saw the computer and thought, hey, that’s a nice unit. I’m going to throw it in my car, and while I’m at it, why not throw in an old dying guy, too. Shit. I’m not seeing any happy endings here.”

  “Didn’t you say Wally Luntz used to work at an iron foundry, too?”

  Gino paused and started fiddling with his phone, pulling up his case notes. “Yeah. American Iron Foundry, Cheeton, Minnesota.”

  They reentered the living room—the fur-clad corpse on the floor was as startling the second time around as it had been the first.

  Magozzi wandered back to the kitchen cabinet where he’d found the address book earlier. Most of the entries were faded, written in an elegant cursive hand trained back in a time when penmanship had been important. Under L, he found a newer addition, written in the shaky script of an elderly person. “Wally Luntz,” he read the entry out loud. “It’s a newer entry, a recent contact. Chuck Spencer’s name and number are in here, too.”

  Gino looked up, his brows creeping toward his hairline. “That connects our two homicides with Alvin Keller, and maybe the dead woman on his living
room floor. We just bought ourselves another case, buddy.”

  Magozzi closed the address book and noticed the cover for the first time. American Iron Foundry, Cheeton, Minnesota, was imprinted in gold letters on the front. He held it up for Gino to see. “We sure as hell did. Call Chief Malcherson and let him know. Technically this is our case now, but ask him if he’ll approve a tandem with whoever shows up to relieve us.”

  Gino was already dialing. “I hear you. While I’m talking to the chief, get the chinchilla and the diamonds before anybody else shows and call your fence.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  Cheeton Sheriff Ernie Fenster had an Iron Range accent and apparently a lot going on in his small-town office—Magozzi could hear plenty of background noise when the sheriff finally picked up.

  “Sheriff, this is Homicide Detective Leo Magozzi out of Minneapolis. Do you have a few minutes?”

  “Absolutely. How can I help you, Detective?”

  “We’ve got a couple homicide cases down here and a possible kidnapping of a vulnerable adult that have some connections, so we’re chasing down every lead. Two of our victims used to work in Cheeton, at the American Iron Foundry—Wallace Luntz and Alvin Keller.”

  The sheriff slurped something liquid. “Well, that’s real interesting. Our county plow driver found a dead local stark naked in a snowbank yesterday, and he worked for AIF, too. Of course, most everybody up here does.”

  Magozzi felt a little jolt of optimism, but he kept it on a tight leash. When you worked Homicide, you learned that there were endless opportunities for promising leads to disintegrate like flash paper. “Do you have a cause of death yet? Hypothermia?”

  “Might have been, but the bullet hole in his head didn’t do him any good either.”

  Bingo.

  “Should get the ME’s report sometime today,” the sheriff continued. “He had to thaw out before they could start cutting. Darn shame. A young guy, thirty-five, name of Ed Farrell. I didn’t really know him—he transferred from an AIF plant out East somewhere a couple years ago—but by all accounts he was well-liked and excelled at his job. I spent a lot of time at our plant interviewing people yesterday, and nobody had a bad word to say about him. I also broke his wife’s heart, and she didn’t have anything bad to say about him either. Poor woman. First she learns her husband’s been murdered, then she goes home after identifying the body and finds her house ripped apart.”

  Bingo, part two. “Burglary?”

  “Actually, it looked more like vandals. Every room was trashed, drawers dumped, closet emptied, like that, but the only thing she noticed missing right off the bat besides the computer was a box full of family stuff.”

  “Valuables?”

  “No, nothing like that, just some old family photos.”

  “Any suspects?”

  “Nope.”

  “What can you tell me about American Iron Foundry, Sheriff?”

  “Just that it’s been around darn near forever. They used to do piecemeal work, like most metal fabricators. Car parts, train cars and tracks, all kinds of ironware, like that. If you were born in Cheeton, chances are you’ll end up working there one day, just like your daddy before you. My own worked there his whole life and never had a complaint except for during WW Two. They had a lot of government contracts back then to manufacture support equipment for the boys abroad, and from then on things got real high pressure real fast.”

  “How so?”

  “The government sent in their people to manage and refit the place, and what does the government do best?”

  “Uh . . . not much?”

  The sheriff chuckled. “You got that right. They’ll take a perfectly good company and screw it into the ground because they’re nothing but a bunch of overeducated nincompoops who’ve never had a real job or a bottom line in their lives.”

  Magozzi smiled, trying to remember the last time he’d heard the term nincompoop.

  “Anyhow, it caused a lot of friction, but that’s old news. Things really changed about fifteen years ago, though. The bottom dropped out of the iron business, so AIF merged with a new outfit. They took over the foundry and started retooling things again. Ed Farrell was part of the latest transition team. That’s what they call folks now who barge in and turn a perfectly good place upside down.”

  “You said they used to do metal fabrication. They don’t anymore?”

  “Oh, sure they do, but like I said, the bottom of that market dropped off a while ago. This new company expanded operations and built a new plant. For the past decade or so they’ve been manufacturing computer equipment and processing chips for Silver Dune Technology. Turns out you need a lot of water to manufacture computer chips, and guess what we’ve got a lot of in Minnesota?”

  “Water. Makes sense.”

  “We’re better for it. The chip division’s pumped more money into the local economy than the iron foundry ever did. A new era, you know?”

  Magozzi looked out the Kellers’ lace-flounced living room window and saw a Crime Scene van pull up to the curb where Gino was working his phone, followed by two squads and an unmarked that disgorged Johnny McLaren and a new promotion named Russ Tamblin. “Our victims retired from the foundry years before Ed Farrell came to Cheeton, so there’s probably nothing there, but I thank you for your time.”

  “You’re very welcome. And say—maybe we’re both chasing the same rabbit, maybe we’re not, but I’d be happy to send you what I’ve got, if you’d oblige and do the same.”

  “I was just about to ask that very thing,” Magozzi said, thinking that Sheriff Ernie Fenster was a guy he wouldn’t mind having a couple of beers with, as long as it wasn’t on the Canadian border in the middle of December. “Did you get a slug from your victim?”

  “The doc did. Sent it off to BCA. I’ll let you know if we get a hit.”

  As Magozzi hung up, Gino poked his head through the front door. “The chief, McLaren, and Tamblin are all on board for a tandem on this one. I called Monkeewrench to let them know about Keller and the iron foundry so they could add it to the Beast’s search in progress. They said they’re getting close to recovering Spencer’s website, so let’s get our new partners up to speed, then head over to Harley’s. Did Cheeton pan any gold?”

  “Maybe. They had a homicide yesterday, another worker at our favorite foundry, shot in the head and stuffed naked into a snowbank in the middle of nowhere. Ed Farrell. Double R, double L. And guess what? His house was trashed, but the only things missing were his computer and a box of family photos.”

  Gino was still for a moment. “Just like Charles Spencer and Alvin Keller, only the Keller place wasn’t trashed.”

  “Maybe they found what they were looking for right away.”

  Gino looked off to the side for the space of a few breaths, then nodded. “I’ll call Harley back, tell him to punch Farrell into the Beast.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Vera Kushner looked up from her computer at the nurses’ station when she heard the front doors of Meadowbrook Memory Care open. A handsome, well-dressed man approached her, a warm smile on his face. He was making direct eye contact with her, which she suddenly realized was so very unusual in this day and age, when most everybody was constantly fixated on their phones. Somehow, when she hadn’t been looking, meaningless interaction with electronic devices had usurped meaningful interaction with real, live human beings. She was getting too old for this world.

  Vera hesitated a moment before shifting into her “Welcome to Meadowbrook!” demeanor. This facility was small, and even though she hadn’t worked here long, she knew all the family members who visited their loved ones regularly. She’d never seen this man before. “Good afternoon, sir, how can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see my uncle. Arthur Friedman.”

  “Oh, of course. Mr. Friedman is one of my favorite patients. Have you visited with us be
fore?”

  His smile faded. “Unfortunately, no. I didn’t even know Uncle Art had Alzheimer’s until last week.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “Family rift and all. You know how that goes.”

  Vera knew exactly how things went. Meadowbrook was expensive, the residents wealthy, and it wasn’t unusual for family vultures to suddenly show up in the end stages in the hopes they’d get written into a will at the last minute, which was so stupid. The people she cared for weren’t legally competent to change their wills, and didn’t they know that? And yet they kept coming for some scrap, some little handout that would never happen. It made her furious, but she kept her composure, because she wasn’t here to judge.

  “What is your name, sir, so I can check you into our system?”

  “James Friedman. Jimmy. At least that’s what Uncle Art always used to call me. I hope he’ll remember me.”

  Vera forced a sympathetic smile. “Your uncle has good days and bad days, but he is in an advanced stage of the disease. If you haven’t seen him for a while, his condition might come as a shock.”

  The man nodded solemnly. “Thank you for telling me that. Is he in good health?”

  “We try to keep him as healthy and as comfortable as possible, but as mobility becomes more and more limited . . . well, it can be challenging.”

  “Yes, of course. I see.” He tipped his head curiously. “Do I detect a hint of an accent?”

  “You have a sharp ear, Mr. Friedman. I thought I’d completely lost my accent after all these years.”

  “It’s very faint. Where are you from originally?”

  “Ukraine. Now, if you’ll just follow me.”

  Vera led him to Suite Six and stopped at the door. Mr. Friedman was in bed, just staring at a far wall. He didn’t even acknowledge a presence in the room, which broke her heart. He was having a bad day. “Hello, Mr. Friedman. You have a visitor, isn’t that exciting? It’s your nephew, Jimmy.” She adjusted his pillows and blanket and wiped the spittle at the corners of his mouth.